


for all the things my hands have held

by summerwoodsmoke



Category: The Village (2004)
Genre: Canon Compliant, During Canon, F/M, Pre-Canon, hands? complicated father figure? complicated sister relationship? HANDS, i took all my feelings about the village and ivy/lucius and i stuffed them into...this, the world moves for love. it kneels before it in awe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-01
Updated: 2018-05-01
Packaged: 2019-04-26 04:45:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14394576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/summerwoodsmoke/pseuds/summerwoodsmoke
Summary: Ivy rubbed a slow hand across a sobbing Kitty’s back as she sang and contemplated the idea of Lucius breaking a girl’s heart.





	for all the things my hands have held

**Author's Note:**

> title from andrew mcmahon's cecilia and the satellite
> 
> i watched the movie for the first time this april and these two truly slayed me, i adore them. i also Love Hands, and the movie definitely indulged me in that, and which is what spurred this whole thing into existence

Many of the boys in the village enjoyed playing stick-pull—two boys sitting on the ground, holding a stick between them and trying to pull the other boy off balance. As a child, Ivy desperately wanted to play, but her mother always reminded her of her dress, and how she wouldn't want to kick it up for everyone to see, or muddy it beyond saving, now would she?

But once, when she was nine, after the village’s Easter dinner, after another afternoon spent pining after the boys’ rough-and-tumble games, her father indulged her. Just the once. 

He took her out behind their house and played stick-pull with her until her arms grew so tired they felt wobbly. She couldn't stop laughing the entire time from the delight of it; she knew, even then, that he was restraining himself, to let her successfully pull him towards her. His hands were big enough to engulf hers on the stick, if he wanted, and she would always remember looking at their staggered hands, hers tiny and pink next to his, and marveling that her father must be not only the strongest, but also the kindest man in the whole world. 

  
  


Kitty couldn't get enough of cat’s cradle as a girl. She would play for an entire day, if she could, and she would make Ivy play it for hours on end with her. Back and forth, they'd pass the string, touching finger to finger to slide the cradle from one sister to the next. 

Ivy protested the game when her hands began to cramp. She wanted to run and leap and chase. She wanted to feel the wind on her face. But she loved her sister, so she stayed. She just couldn't wait till little Jane was old enough to understand _rules_ —maybe then she could be made to play with Kitty instead. 

  
  


Ivy was twelve the year she fell sick and lost her vision. She spent what felt like eons in a fevered haze, in and out of consciousness. It was amidst that haze that her eyesight dimmed; it was like she fell asleep during the day and awoke to an eternal, lampless night. 

The first time she awoke after telling her mother she couldn't see, it was to her father’s tight grip on her hand, and to his soft, silent weeping. She couldn't hear him, but his tears fell on their clasped hands. Her hand felt impossibly small in his. She felt impossibly small in this world, now. 

  
  


Ivy received her most precious belonging ever for her thirteenth birthday, from a shy and quiet Lucius Hunt. 

Ivy sat at the head of one of the village picnic tables, as the birthday girl, with Kitty at her right hand and her father at her left. After they ate, they turned her chair so her back was to the table, and people brought her gifts. Mrs. Clack gave her a soft, smooth hair ribbon—green, she was told. The Nicholsons gifted her a woven basket. And so on. 

Ivy was handing the basket to Kitty when she heard two sets of feet approach. “Happy birthday, Ivy,” Alice Hunt said warmly, and Ivy smiled in response. “Lucius here has a gift for you. He made it all by himself!”

From Lucius, she simply heard a boyish clearing of the throat. His steps came closer, till he was beside her, then kneeling before her. Slowly, softly, something was placed in her lap, atop her hands. Thin, cylindrical, long—“A stick?” she asked. 

“A walking stick,” Lucius affirmed. “T-to help you know what's in front of you. And—” He cut himself off, and Ivy inhaled sharply at the touch of his fingers on hers. Delicate and soft, but with the beginnings of calluses, the promise of strength. He grasped her hands lightly, moving them along the walking stick. He held one hand close against his, her hand from wrist to tip snug against his palm, and he shifted gently to hold her index finger and slide it across the wood, to feel his engravings— _I V Y_ —she smiled. 

“Just for me,” she said. 

“Just for you,” he repeated quietly. He lifted his hands from hers, and she would swear they tingled pins and needles at the loss. All at once, sounds from the party around them came rushing back, like she'd lost all attention for anything but him until he freed her. 

“That's a wonderful gift, Lucius,” she heard her father say, gruffly, like he had a lump in his throat. 

“So pretty,” Kitty murmured, and Ivy felt the vibration of Kitty’s touch on the end of the stick. Ivy tightened her grip, making a fist around the letters of her name. 

“Thank you, Lucius,” she whispered. He paused at her side, silent, and she listened to his inhales and exhales until he stood again, and returned to his mother. 

“Happy birthday, Ivy,” he replied. 

  
  


School was different, without her eyesight, but she'd always had a good memory, so she wouldn't say she found it especially harder—at least, not the actual _school_ aspect. The socialization part was a bit more difficult. 

There was no true nastiness in the village, nothing like what their parents abhorred about the towns, and Ivy was never teased or mocked or shunned for her blindness, but neither did it make her a popular candidate for friendship. 

She could always depend on Kitty, that was never a question, but days when Kitty was out sick were a bit harder. 

One week when Kitty was sick with a flu, Ivy realized on her second day of being alone that Lucius staying behind in the coat room at lunch break was no coincidence. The day before, he'd simply waited, to be the last to leave, but that wasn't something he normally did when Kitty was around. 

Well, if he was willing to be helpful, Ivy certainly wouldn't turn him down. “Lucius?” she asked from her coat hook. Lucius’s hook was at the far end of the coat room, but she could still tell when he stiffened his stature, knowing he was caught out. She went on without a reply. “I’d love to take a turn around the schoolhouse, get some fresh air, but I’m worried of twisting my ankle. Would you guide me?” She fastened her cloak at her neck, turned, and walked to the door. She wasn't especially expecting a reply, not from a quiet boy like Lucius, and she didn't get one. 

Instead, she listened to his cautious footstep grow closer, hoped she wasn't blushing, and felt her breath catch in her throat when his rougher fingers slid against hers, to lift her hand and tuck it in his arm. “Of course,” he said finally, as he lifted the latch on the door. Ivy bit her lip to keep from grinning too widely. 

  
  


Lucius graduated school when Ivy was fourteen. Kitty graduated when Ivy was fifteen. Both were still so dependable for her, whenever she needed them, but she found often that she didn't. She knew her home, and her home extended beyond the walls of her house to include the entirety of the village. 

The entirety of their world. 

However, despite her independence, she still enjoyed walking arm in arm with people. With Kitty, it was how they gossiped: always on the move, and fast, so their parents wouldn't catch them at it. 

With Lucius too, it felt like getting away with something. She'd be out in the meadow, helping Kitty and Meredith and Nancy mind the little ones, or she'd be walking back from visiting Mrs. Clack, or she'd be the last one leaving the schoolhouse at the end of the day; wherever it was, he always found her. And wherever it was, she always knew it was him, faster than anything. His presence was a warm spot of colour in her world of black, and she would recognize it anywhere. 

Sometimes, she’d say “I could use some direction,” or she'd ask, “Going my way?”, or sometimes, she'd say nothing at all, and simply stick out her arm, sure of his response. 

He'd always step in close, close enough to feel his warmth along her side; he'd always clasp his hand in hers first, even though she didn't really need help in linking arms, before tucking her hand into the crook of his arm; he'd always inhale deeply before saying anything, if he said anything at all. “Headed home?” he'd ask, or “Where to, Miss Ivy?”, but always the inhale first. 

She didn't know to savour the last time it happened; she didn't know Lucius Hunt’s delicate, callused touch to be a treasured resource she would never again be allowed. 

Ivy was sixteen by the time she realized he hadn't sought her out in some time. She made a point to seek him out instead, and attempted a rather dramatic fall in front of him, but she received nothing. Nothing but a loud, worried gasp from Kitty, bless her heart.

  
  


Ivy was also sixteen when she decided to cut her hair. 

“Oh, but darling, why?” her mother asked, smoothing her hand across Ivy’s scalp. 

“How much time do you spend braiding it every morning? Time I’m sure you could use to help the children instead, and then I’d be free to help as well. And I can't expect you to do my hair every day for the rest of my life, can I? What of when I get married?” Ivy bit her lip once she finished her little speech. She hoped she didn’t go overboard with it; she truly did want her hair to be cut, but she would also miss the unique one-on-one time with her mother that her hair had granted them, as she would miss the elaborate braids her mother gave her. 

Her mother stroked her hair again, bumping over the crown braid that encircled Ivy’s head. It was a favoured way for Ivy to wear her hair; she remembered loving how regal she and Kitty looked, as girls, and she enjoyed the compact feeling of it against her head even now. 

But sensibility was what she wanted more, now. And so the hair would go. 

Her mother exhaled wistfully, slowly dropping her hand back to her side. “Let me fetch my scissors, then.”

  
  


Ivy’s hands had their fair share of work. She kneaded bread, wiped clean her siblings’ scrapes, twisted flower crowns into being, played clapping games with Noah. She gripped her walking stick like a lifeline when she needed it; she held it like an advantage, most days. She brushed hair, felt foreheads for fever, let yarn slide between her fingers into a slow-building scarf. 

She rubbed a slow hand across a sobbing Kitty’s back as she sang and contemplated the idea of Lucius breaking a girl’s heart. 

Ivy wouldn't deny that at sixteen, she herself hadn't felt a bit like her heart had been broken, or at least abandoned, but that had always been her own private sorrow. For Kitty, it was different. For Kitty, this had been something she'd gone to Father about, something she had prepared for. Something she had given herself fully to, and so felt fully her heart break. 

_Why?_ Ivy wondered. She lay down next to her sister, curled behind her with an arm tossed over her waist as Kitty’s cries quieted into shaky breaths. Kitty and Lucius were probably the two people Ivy loved best in the world. She couldn't fathom the thought of not loving either of them, so she couldn't understand where Lucius’ thoughts had taken him. 

Kitty was asleep by then, her fingers loosely tangled with Ivy’s. Ivy gently pressed her forehead against Kitty’s spine and thought. Six years since she'd been sixteen—had it really been so long? She hadn't realized. Beside the fact that she hadn't touched Lucius in at least that long, she didn't feel like she'd grown especially apart from him. Yes, she’d felt abandoned, but that didn't mean she had been. At least, not in every respect. 

If Lucius was still a part of her life—and of course he was, a life without Lucius was not a life Ivy knew, not a life she had ever known, nor intended to know—then why had he changed one significant part of of their relationship? What had motivated that decision?

He'd been twenty when she was sixteen. _Maybe he didn't want people to know,_ she thought. Know what? she tried to question, but gave up denying herself honesty. She thought of the decision to cut her hair, of deciding to give away that time with her mother and her love for braids to make room for other things, all while not letting on what a sacrifice it was. _Perhaps sometimes, we don't do what we want so people don't know we want it._

Kitty exhaled in her sleep and Ivy sniffled a bit. Her sister ran hot when she slept, and she could feel the waves of heat beginning to radiate from her. Slowly, she extricated herself from around her sister and went to change for bed. 

Ivy felt sure, now she'd thought it through, that she’d puzzled out exactly what Lucius had been thinking—both today, and six years ago. It was a satisfying feeling, to be sure you had the right of it, but where to go from here?

She wasn't sure whether she'd seek out Lucius, ask him about this. On the one hand, he'd broken her sister’s heart, and what sort of betrayal would that be, for her to run to him next?

On the other hand, she wasn't sixteen anymore. 

  
  


When she had gone out into the cold to sit on the porch with Lucius, she hadn’t been sure what to expect, but this had surely not been it. She had teased, like she did, and was too frank, like she was, and then, with her heart beating steady, she had brought up their wedding. And it spurred a speech from him that had shocked her into utter, complete silence.

“And yes,” he whispered softly, coming to an end, “I will dance with you on our wedding night.”

Ivy’s heart stuttered. In all honesty, she had never heard Lucius speak so much all at once, never heard him so impassioned, never felt his presence quite so fiercely as she did then. She trembled slightly, and felt a tear drop from her eye, even as she felt him lean in close to her.

His hand—his gentle, callused hand—encompassed her cheek and wiped her tears away. Ivy inhaled slowly, her breath catching as Lucius let his fingers run through her hair. They leaned into each other, and met in the middle.

  
  


She could always sense him, once he was close, no matter where. Out by Resting Rock, in the housing row of the village, during the chaos of an attack from the Bad Ones. Always, always, she could be sure that if she put out her hand, he would take it without question, and lead her wherever she wanted to go. 

Waiting at the open door, with Kitty begging her to come to the cellar, had been excruciating in some ways, and yet still the easiest thing she'd ever done in others. She knew he would come. She knew his colour, and she knew it was there. She didn't care if she had to wait. 

Kitty’s wedding had been almost more than she could handle, a riot of noise and stench, the crush of bodies she had to fight through, but still he took her hand. She knew she was not alone, nor would she ever be. 

And then, the news about Noah, and his blood-soaked hands. People were nervous, worried, but not frantic like at the wedding. It wasn't a struggle to walk among them, and she had ample room to hold her arm out in front of her. But she knew almost before she did it that there would be no hand clasped in hers, not this time. She dropped her walking stick, dropped her arm, and ran for the Hunt house. Inside was a blankness of colour, a darkness she did not want to find familiar. 

And for the first time, she had to be the one to take Lucius’ hand in hers. 

  
  


After visiting the Shed Not To Be Used, but before she met with the boys who would accompany her to the towns, Ivy went to see Lucius once more. She heard Alice and Victor take respectful steps back from the bed as she knelt at Lucius’s side and clasped his delicate hand between her own. She folded herself around his arm, folded herself down toward his ear, and hoped to God he would hear her as she whispered to him. 

“When we are married,” she said, fiercely on the _when_ , “I expect a lot of dancing, you hear? And I will let you lead, I promise, all night, Lucius. And we will know joy, endless joy.” And she sealed it with a kiss to his fingers. 

  
  


She keeps her promise. 

Their wedding is long and joyful and packed to the brim with dancing villagers. Lucius keeps one hand clasped in hers, the other tight on her waist. She can't stop grinning, and she periodically tucks her face against his shoulder, in hopes that hiding her face will somehow help her bear her joy. 

“Are you enjoying this?” she asks between dances. They're both out of breath, their heaving chests pressed together. 

“How could I not be?” her sweet husband replies. 

She smiles and tilts her face towards his. “Savour it now, Lucius Hunt, for I will not let you lead me so easily most days.”

He laughs, and lets go of her hand, pins and needles in his wake. He cradles her cheek, his hand broad and rough and damp with sweat against her flushed skin; her eyes flicker shut, not that it matters either way. She could sense him a million miles away. His lips meet her own, soft and gentle, and it’s sure to ruin it, but she grins wide, mouth open. She feels impossible, like this. Fearless, limitless. And loved. 

**Author's Note:**

> kudos and comments are much loved!
> 
> come find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/alinastarkovas) or on [tumblr](https://tanosoka.tumblr.com)


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